When you hear people talk about the devil’s strip, do you know what they’re talking about? The devil’s strip is the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the curb. In Boca Raton it’s known as a swale and in Chicago it’s known as a parkway. But in many other places in Canada and the United States, it’s known as the devil’s strip.
On February 28, 1948 the Montreal Gazette included a brief article about a Court of Appeals court that upheld an earlier verdict against the Montreal Tramways Company for injuries sustained by Bernard Wilson Hansen on December 27, 1945. In all, the carpenter was awarded $2,570 CDN (or the equivalent of $25,790 CDN in 2015 dollars) despite claims by lawyer Marcus Sperber that the verdict was “ridiculous.” The article was entitled, “Appeal Court Upholds Ridiculous Verdict” and ended with this paragraph.
Hansen, carrying a tool chest on his shoulder, attempted to cross Bleury Street with the green light in his favor. The traffic light changed when he was in the middle of the street and as he stood on the “devil’s strip” a moving tram struck the tool chest. He fell to the ground and was badly injured.
The Toronto World edition of April 22, 1920 wrote about the devil’s strip in an article entitled, “Toronto To Have Semaphore System Of Traffic Control: Deputy-Chief Dickson Explains American Method In Detail.” Toronto was being modernized, and semaphore traffic signals were being installed! The Chief of Police Grasett had informed the media as well as the Board of Control that his department was in the process of drawing up plans for these signals, which the Chief of Police guaranteed would handle traffic more efficiently than police officers by at least fifty percent, based on their success in larger American cities. The article began with this impressive paragraph:
“Stop.” No traffic cop has waved his hand, but a long line of traffic at a downtown intersection has been brought to an abrupt halt. “Go.” Again no movement on the part of the minion of the law, but the long line of vehicles continue on their way. The constable also, is not standing in the devil’s strip, in the centre of the intersection, but off to one side.
On May 14, 1901, a lawsuit for negligence by a street railway was heard in the Ontario Court of Appeal. Known as Robinson v Toronto Railway Co., the judge determined that the motorman of an electric car was not guilty of negligence because he didn’t stop the car at the first sign of a horse being frightened by a motor car or anything else that might spook a horse. It was determined that the most that could be expected of the streetcar motorman was to proceed carefully, and as such, the court was satisfied that the motorman had done so. The previous finding of negligence was set aside. The idiom was used in the testimony of one of the witnesses.
Porteous, who was called as a witness for the plaintiff, says that he was driving south of the track; that the horse became frightened and unmanageable at the sight of the defendant’s car and backed over the south track across the “devil’s strip” on to the north track; that it then went to the boulevard, made a wheel, and jumped straight in front of the north track again, and got his foot in the fender just as the car stopped. He also says the car struck the side of the buggy and threw the plaintiff out on to the road, occasioning the injuries complained of.
Both she and Porteous say they shouted to the men on the car to stop; that the men seemed to be laughing, and that the speed of the car was not slackened until it was within a few feet of the horse.
In 1887, the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto published a book titled, “Transactions.” In the chapter having to do with asphalt and asphalt paving, written by F.N. Speller, the idiom cropped while discussing the preparation of the foundation for asphalt paving.
The sub-grade is carefully prepared, levelled, and rolled, if found necessary, for solidification. The kerbs are placed in position, either being set in concrete or gravel. The subsoil is drained by four-inch tile drains running parallel with the kerb in three rows, one under each kerb, and one under the devil’s strip, or centre of the roadway, the former making connections with the catch-water basins.
If electric car tracks are to be laid, the sub-grade must be excavated to twelve inches extra in the track allowance, this being then filled in with six inches of ballast and compacted.
It should be noted that the majority of magazine, newspaper, and resource book references that mention the devil’s strip are primarily from Canada, and as such, it would appear that the idiom is a Canadian term that made its way to America over time. However, the “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting” of the Ohio Society of Professional Engineers published in 1883, M.E. Rawson, Assistant City Civil Engineer for the city of Cleveland in Ohio refers to this same space on city streets in Cleveland as the space that is “known by the significant rather than elegant name of the devil’s strip.”
Prior to streetcars, there was no need for a boulevard on city streets and since the first streetcar was patented on January 17, 1871. The first streetcar made its appearance on August 1, 1873 in San Francisco on a stretch of track that began at the intersection of Clay and Kearny Streets to the crest of a hill 307 feet above the starting point on 2,800 feet of track. By the 1880s, streetcars were finding their way into most major American and Canadian cities, with the largest and busiest fleet of cable cars being in Chicago … as were the devil’s strip.
Idiomation was unable to find an earlier published mention of the devil’s strip prior to the one published in 1883, however, the term was known and used in Cleveland at that time which means the term was understood by professionals dealing with streetcar issues at the time. The term is therefore pegged to about 1880.
Historically Speaking 